Ugly Memories
by Jainie Starr
Summary: Arthur and Curt (post VG) are a couple; Curt gets a phonecall from family delivering bad news.


Ugly Memories

Curt and I were at the funeral. He wore an ankle-length black trench coat, black jeans, black T-shirt, and a dark-purple wool scarf draped around his neck, his white-blond hair pulled back into a neat ponytail and hidden inside his coat. He hid his arctic blue eyes behind a pair of black sunglasses, his pale face clean, his slight goatee having been shaved off for the occasion. It was the closest he'd come to looking sedate and respectable for as long as I'd known him. 

A blanket of fresh snow had just fallen, making everything around us look so clean, so new. A fierce, sharp wind blew around us and Curt drew his coat around himself more tightly, hiding his bare hands under his arms, to prevent his tender skin from being stung by the cold. The trees that dotted the landscape swayed in the wind, their bare, black branches seeming almost to claw at the sky. 

Curt hadn't been back to Michigan for nearly five years. It had taken his father's sudden passing to bring him back home, although he wasn't really there for his father's sake. 

***

Two days before. 

"Babe, who is it?" I called. "If it's Lou, tell him to leave me the fuck alone already and that I'll get the Salrio story to him on Monday." I grumbled as I pulled the blankets over my head. "It's me day off, for Christ's sakes!" 

There was no answer. The nagging ring of the telephone had woken us up a little after half-seven in the morning. With a string of muttered curses, Curt had drug himself out of the bed and trudged into the living room to answer it. Just a couple of moments later, I heard the receiver being slammed down. Then, almost immediately after, a loud crash. What the hell? 

I quickly rolled out of bed, slipped into my robe and rushed into the living room to find Curt sitting on the floor by the sofa, cradling his head in his hands. The phone lay in pieces on the floor a few feet away in the hallway, a droning busy signal echoing from the receiver. The sound bounced off the walls and filled the entire apartment. I couldn't help but marvel at just how ghostly quiet the place could be in the mornings. I knelt down beside him and rested a tentative hand lightly on his shoulder. When he was agitated or upset, Curt could be unpredictable, sometimes even violent (although he only ever took his rage out on himself and any inanimate objects within arm's reach at that moment), so I had to be careful of what I said and did. 

"What's wrong? Curt, what's happened?" I asked softly as I stroked his cheek. 

"That was my ma," Curt murmured, his chin pressed to his bare chest. He raked his hair back out of his face, cleared his throat roughly, and looked up at me. "My old man died yesterday and she was calling because she wants me to come to the funeral." 

"Oh, god, babe, come here," I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and pulled him close to me. He buried his face in the folds of my robe, almost as if he were trying to hide. 

The death of the man who had ruined his childhood and had pounded and guilt-tripped him into the insecure, frustrated man he was today was summoning him back to the nightmare-laden soil of his youth. It came as no surprise to me that he would want to hide from that - hide from all of the ugly, bitter memories of his life before. Before the band, before the fame, before Brian, before me, before everything. The life before that had made Curt Wild the anguished, misunderstood figure he was today. 

"Are you going?" I asked him. 

"Will you come with me?" He took me by the shoulders and looked up at me, blue eyes dulled with desperation and fear. "Please, Arthur? I don't think I can do this by myself and I don't wanna try." 

"If you need me, of course, I'll come with you," I rested his head against my chest once again. "Of course, I will. How could I ever say no to you?" 

***

All of the mourners had long since gone home. Curt just couldn't bring himself to face his mother and his brothers and sisters after so long. We'd geared ourselves up to get out of the car about twenty times as we waited for just the right moment to slip quietly into the crowd of figures swathed in black. They huddled together under the tiny vinyl canopy erected for the service, to shield them in case it started snowing again. As the service concluded and everyone slowly walked towards their cars, Curt pointed to people he knew. 

"Hey! There's my ma," he exclaimed. He pressed the tip of his index finger to the glass and rested his forehead against the window. "That's her, Arthur. See? She's pretty, huh?" He turned and glanced over his shoulder at me - offered me a small, bashful smile. 

I leaned over his shoulder and tried to catch a glimpse of the person he was pointing at - a frumpy, matronly woman with round cheeks and brown hair subtly tinged with gray. She wore a tasteful black frock of unknown vintage and a black hat with a veil, dabbing at her eyes with a delicate white handkerchief. 

"She's pretty," I smiled as I rested my chin on Curt's shoulder. He glanced back at me again and kissed my forehead with a warm smile. 

"Oh! There's my sister, Katie," he pointed to the young blond-haired woman walking with his mother, holding her hand and patting it consolingly. "God, she looks so beautiful. And there's my older brother Luke and my baby brother, Dean. Man, he must be in college now, I guess." 

By the time Curt had mustered up enough courage to actually get out of the car, everyone had already gotten into their cars and limos and driven off to the wake. The cemetary caretakers busied themselves filling in the grave and taking down the canopy. The snow crunched under our feet as we made our way up the small hill towards the grave. The caretakers scuttled away, all business - one of them cast a furtive glare my way when he noticed that Curt and I were holding hands. I flashed a quick smile at him, then looked away. 

***

"How long has it been since you talked to them?" I asked softly as we stood arm in arm beside the grave. Fresh earth had been smoothed over the grave and a plain floral wreath of silk flowers lay on top of the earth. 

"Shit. Twelve years, at least," Curt took a deep, long drag on his cigarette, his eyes narrowed into thin blue slits. "As soon as I got back home from the... the shock treatments and stuff, it didn't get any better. The old man would never let up. Always askin' where I was going and with who and why and what we were gonna do once we got there. Even after all of the shit he put me through, he _still_ couldn't fuckin' trust me. After about a week of that bullshit, I took off." 

"And you never saw him again after that?" 

"Nope," he flicked ash onto the ground. "Even after I hit it big, I couldn't get him to come to any of the shows. It was like he was going out of his way _not_ to be happy for me. No matter what I did, he could never forgive me. He just kept punishing me - returned all my letters, hung up if I tried to call. He just... shut me out of his life." 

Curt slipped his sunglasses off and I saw the tears twinkling in his eyes. I wrapped my arms around his waist and held him tight as he wiped at the tears with the back of his hand. It didn't matter to me if anyone saw us. 

"How do you even _do_ that, y'know?" He asked, his voice gravelly and strained. "How do you just cut flesh and blood out of your life? Your own fuckin' family? How do people do that, Arthur? I'd never do that to my own son, never," he sniffled weakly as fresh tears filled his eyes and slipped down his cheeks. 

"I know you wouldn't," I brushed his tears away gently with the pad of my thumb. "My family chased me away, too," I said softly. 

"I know," Curt wrapped his arms around me at long last. "And I'm so sorry for them. They pushed you away and never got to see what a wonderful person you grew up to be. What a good, beautiful man you became." 

"I love you." 

"I love you, too," he kissed my cheek and pulled me into a tight hug. "God, I love you so much. You're all I've got, now, babe. All I've got left in this whole fuckin' world." 

***

"Hey, Ma?" Curt stuck his middle finger into his other ear, trying to muffle the cacophony of the fleet of sixteen-wheelers barreling by on the highway. "Ma, it's me! It's Curt!" He yelled into the receiver. "Yeah, I'm sorry I couldn't make it. It's just that..." he looked over at me expectantly. 

I gestured at the road and the trucks roaring by and shrugged helplessly. Somehow Curt understood my mini round of charades and nodded his head. 

We'd pulled into a truck stop along the highway on the way back up to New York. Curt thought it would be downright rude if he didn't at least give his mother a call to let her know why he hadn't made it to the funeral. The fact that Curt was lying through his teeth was completely besides the point. 

"Yeah, Ma - there was just so much traffic... and plus, we - we got lost." He gave me a grateful smile and sighed, giving me a thumbs-up. "We? Who's we? Uhm." Again, he looked over at me, but I couldn't think of anything that would help him this time. 

"Uh, it's me and my friend Arthur, Ma. My friend, Arthur! My friend from New York City?" He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other in the tiny phone booth as he listened to his mother speaking on the other end of the line, looking like a five-year-old that had just gotten caught in the midst of some particularly inspired mischief-making. 

"What's she saying, babe?" I whispered. 

"She wants us to come over to the house and have dinner," he whispered back, as he held his hand over the receiver. He removed his hand from the receiver and returned his middle finger to his ear. "No, Ma. We can't. We can't! We had to turn back almost as soon as we got onto the highway. There's ice all over the roads and the weather guy says it's only gonna get worse. Yeah, Ma, I'm sorry, too. Yeah. Well, maybe some other time. Okay, I'll give you a call sometime soon, okay? Okay -- " 

Curt winced as his mother hung up the phone without even so much as a goodbye for her son. He pinched his eyes shut and leaned back against the Plexiglas wall of the phone booth, letting his head loll back on his shoulders. He put the receiver back in its cradle, sighed, and banged the back of his head sharply against the wall supporting him. I moved into the booth and stood beside Curt, laced my fingers with his and rested my head on his shoulder as he fought the sobs that stole his breath away. 

***

Curt reached into the folds of his coat and pulled out a rose. The blossom hung on the stem, drooping lazily like a sleeping man's head - limp, dead. It's lush red petals had wilted and turned black. Without a word, Curt tossed the dying bloom onto the clean, soft earth that had been smoothed over the grave. 

"Let's go, okay?" He laced his fingers with mine as he slipped his sunglasses back on. 

The End. 


End file.
